Twelve Minutes (2021 Video Game)
10/10
More than 12 minutes of original fun.
22 August 2021
12 minutes starts off with an interesting top-down view of an apartment foyer. The tutorial and game mechanics are offered by navigating down the hallway to your apartment door and opening it. The controls and gameplay are a very straight forward click and drag system which is very intuitive.

The graphics are quite nice for the style and suits the story and gameplay. It is nothing special though and no use of ray tracing or any particularly breathtaking visuals. The voice cast were great and this is no surprise considering the three main actors were James McAvoy, Daisy Ridley and Willem DaFoe. No expense spared in the casting department which helps with the immersion.

The game revolves around your tiny apartment with your wife and is played out in real time with a maximum of 12 minutes through any given time loop. Each time someone dies or the current story is played out the story is rewound back to the start of the 12 minutes and the loop starts again.

Whilst it does sound extremely monotonous, each play through gives you more information and answers in order to use that newly acquired information to go forward the loop after and it continues until you are able to solve the mystery and get one or several of the many endings. I thought the story was excellent and was not disappointed.

I can see how some people may be turned off by the repetitiveness of running through the same scene and dialogue over and over again, but for me this was the interesting part. It wasn't until I was attempting achievements that it started to feel a bit grindy.

I had an absolute blast searching for new ways to gather more information and get closer to the end and thought it was a very clever way for a point and click puzzle/adventure game if you would even call it that. This was one of my favourite games in a long time and I can't wait for Annapurna Interactive to try something similar in a new release. I would definitely be playing on launch that's for sure!
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